By Contributing Writer Vanessa Vestergaard
“Welcome to ‘The Big Box Store!’” is a frequent beginning for Operation Santa Claus (OSC). It is there that I start to buy pretty and festive gift bags. Oftentimes, I am lost in a maze of shelves and aisles. Imagine being in a vast desert and having no idea where to go or where to look. The feeling can be quite anxiety-provoking because of the immense space and the calm that one loses in the midst of everything. So much is around that even staff are lost in these big box stores, where a hopeless sense of being stranded ensues. Would this one Friday afternoon of shopping be any different?
In early pre-holiday shopping, I found a small act of kindness in a big box store. Usually, I wouldn’t ask for help because perhaps I am too early or perhaps all the staff are too busy to be distracted by my request. Yet, on this Friday afternoon, I thought that I would cast my fishing line in the deep sea that surrounded me and ask a staff member for help finding my items. What I expected and what happened changed my experience and led me to see our impersonal “big box” world differently.
Turning to the nearest help, I said, “Excuse me, could you help me find holiday gift labels and special holiday gift bags for candy?” What I found was what makes OSC special: connection in remote places. The person who stopped what he was doing and started to look for over twenty minutes above and below the shelves in every container had a name: Ramon. I asked for his name because I wanted him to be recognized for his job and the extra effort that went into helping a stranger in a place where someone could be routinely dismissed and neglected. After a good amount of time, he showed me the items, and I thanked him for his work, both personally and to his manager. Ramon made my day.
As I work on filling gift bags for OSC, I will think of Ramon not as a seasonal “ghost worker” in a big box store but as a person with a name who shared through his work a brief “connection” to OSC. My greatest source of pride in OSC is how we recognize lives around us that we don’t know and that we should know. OSC connects us to isolated lives in rural communities, individuals living alone, and those without shelter.
Ramon is a reminder that we all should not live unnoticed or forgotten, even as we shop in these vast stores that are now our current, new, and routine worlds. Instead of moving out of them so quickly, let us stop and pause to see who is inside. We will be surprised by the helping hand and warm smile that make our time not lost, but time given to connection and human spirit.
